John Decker (b. Leopold von der Decken , November 8, 1895 – June 8, 1947) was a painter, set designer and caricaturist in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s.
Leopold von der Decken was born in Berlin, Germany. As a teenager, he lived in London, painting scenery in theatres; this was interrupted by the advent of the First World War, when he was arrested as an enemy alien and interned on the Isle of Man. In 1921, he changed his name to John Decker and emigrated to America, [1] : 24 where he worked as a cartoonist for the New York Evening World until 1928, [1] : 31 when he moved to Hollywood and took up fine art.
Many film stars, including Anthony Quinn, Errol Flynn, Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, and the Marx Brothers, commissioned Decker to paint their portraits, [1] : 4 and many of his works were used in films: the paintings of the frustrated artist protagonist in Fritz Lang's 1945 film Scarlet Street were actually by Decker. One of his most famous portraits, depicting his friend and drinking companion W.C. Fields as Queen Victoria, hung for many years at Chasen's Restaurant in West Hollywood, California. An oil painting of John Wayne, which Wayne commissioned Decker to paint in 1945, sold for $71,700 at a John Wayne estate auction conducted by Heritage Auctions on October 6, 2011. [2] Like his friends Fields and John Barrymore, the years of seemingly endless drinking sprees wreaked massive damage on his body, resulting in a premature death. Decker died in Hollywood on June 8, 1947, at age 51. [3]
Decker's mother, Maria Anna Avenarius (1865–1918), [4] was an opera singer, who performed Wagnerian operas in Berlin and Bayreuth. [1] : 9 Her father, Ferdinand Avenarius, was an actor. [4] Decker's father, Graf Ernst August von der Decken (1867–1934), grew up in the castle Ringelheim in Salzgitter, Germany, and became a reporter for British and German newspapers. [1] [4] His parents met in the operas of Berlin and Bayreuth. In 1897, two years after their son's birth, they moved to London [1] and married in April 1898 in Greenwich. [5]
Decker's grandfather Graf Georg von der Decken was a member of the German Reichstag. Like his grandson, George was an artist and created huge oil paintings of his castle, paintings for the neighbouring church, and carved wooden sculptures.
The Silver Screen, caricature studies of Hollywood actors and actresses of the 1920s and 1930s to a mural decoration 1941:
Grand Hotel is a 1932 American pre-Code drama film directed by Edmund Goulding and produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The screenplay by William A. Drake is based on the 1930 play of the same title by Drake, who had adapted it from the 1929 novel Menschen im Hotel by Vicki Baum. To date, it is the only film to have won the Academy Award for Best Picture without being nominated in any other category.
Greta Garbo was a Swedish-American actress and a premier star during Hollywood's silent and early golden eras. Regarded as one of the greatest screen actresses of all time, she was known for her melancholic and somber screen persona, her film portrayals of tragic characters, and her subtle and understated performances. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Garbo fifth on its list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
The following is an overview of 1926 in film, including significant events, a list of films released, and notable births and deaths.
Marc Quinn is a British contemporary visual artist whose work includes sculpture, installation, and painting. Quinn explores "what it is to be human in the world today" through subjects including the body, genetics, identity, environment, and the media. His work has used materials that vary widely, from blood, bread and flowers, to marble and stainless steel. Quinn has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Sir John Soane's Museum, the Tate Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Fondation Beyeler, Fondazione Prada, and South London Gallery. The artist was a notable member of the Young British Artists movement.
The decade of the 1920s in film involved many significant films.
George Edward Hurrell was a photographer who contributed to the image of glamour presented by Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s.
Showdown is a romantic adventure novel written by famous Tasmanian-born actor Errol Flynn (1909–1959). It was first published in 1946 by Invincible Press (Australia) and subsequently in the UK in 1952 and in paperback in 1961. Flynn draws on his experiences working in and around New Guinea when young to provide the background. Accounts of his sailing in New Guinea waters appear in his autobiographies, Beam Ends (1937) and My Wicked, Wicked Ways (1959).
Flesh and the Devil is an American silent romantic drama film released in 1926 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and stars Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Lars Hanson, and Barbara Kent, directed by Clarence Brown, and based on the novel The Undying Past by Hermann Sudermann.
Nils Anton Alfhild Asther was a Swedish actor active in Hollywood from 1926 to the mid-1950s, known as "the male Greta Garbo". Between 1916 and 1963 he appeared in over seventy feature films, sixteen of which were produced in the silent era. He is mainly remembered today for two silent films – The Single Standard and Wild Orchids – he made with fellow Swede Greta Garbo, and his portrayal of the title character in the controversial pre-Code Frank Capra film The Bitter Tea of General Yen.
Fritz Reuter Leiber Sr. was an American actor. A Shakespearean actor on stage, he also had a successful career in film. He was the father of science fiction and fantasy writer Fritz Leiber Jr., who was also an actor for a time.
Ernest Henry Westmore, was a Hollywood make-up artist and sometimes actor, the third child in George Westmore's famed Westmore family tree. Perc Westmore's twin, the two were born in 1904 in Canterbury, England, later moving to Canada and then the United States.
Charles Joshua Chaplin was a French painter and printmaker who painted both landscapes and portraits. He worked in techniques such as pastels, lithography, watercolor, chalk, oil painting and etching. He was best known for his elegant portraits of young women.
Mickey's Gala Premier is a Walt Disney cartoon produced in 1933, directed by Burt Gillett, and featuring parodies of several famous Hollywood film actors from the 1930s. It was the 58th Mickey Mouse short film, and the eighth of that year.
The Autograph Hound is a 1939 Donald Duck cartoon which features Donald Duck as an autograph hunter in Hollywood. Many celebrities from the 1930s are featured. This is the first cartoon where Donald Duck is featured in his blue sailor hat.
Pieter Snyers or Peter Snijers was a Flemish art collector, painter, draughtsman and engraver. He practised a wide variety of genres, including portraits, genre painting, still life and landscape painting. His masterpiece is a series of 12 paintings, each representing a different month of the year.
The von der Decken family is the name of an old Hanoverian family of German nobility. Since more than 750 years the center of the family is in a part of Lower Saxony at the south bank of the river Elbe called Kehdingen.
Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until his suicide in 1945, was also a painter. He produced hundreds of works when he tried to sell his paintings and postcards to earn a living during his Vienna years (1908–1913) but had little commercial success. A number of his paintings were recovered after the Second World War and have been sold at auctions for tens of thousands of dollars. Others were seized by the United States Army and are still in U.S. government possession.
The Autograph Hunter is a 1934 short animated film distributed by Columbia Pictures, featuring the comic strip character Krazy Kat as well as some caricatures of well-known actors of the time.
Georg Decker was an Austro-Hungarian portrait artist.
Boris Deutsch (1892–1978) was a naturalized American painter.